Lack of peer review makes findings less credible, more awesome.

How do you know a news story is going to be good? One sure sign is that it opens with the line, "There's a high likelihood that hairs recovered during a state-sponsored expedition in a southern Siberian cave came from a yeti, a prominent Russian cryptozoologist said Tuesday."

Yes, that's right—a real honest-to-goodness Abominable Snowman. The Moscow Timeshas the story of Valentin Sapunov, a professor at the State Hydrometeorological University in St. Petersburg, who says he collected the suspect fur "during a trip to the Azasskaya cave in the Kemerovo region."

Sounds legit. But all geniuses have their haters, and Sapunov has one Jeff Meldrum, an Idaho State biologist who was at the "yeti conference" in Russia from which the expedition set off.

"There was no expedition. The conference participants were accompanied by the press on a field trip to a cave site. It is my opinion that the 'evidence' found in the cave was unreliable," said Jeff Meldrum, a biologist at Idaho State University and cryptozoologist.

Meldrum, who took part in the expedition, added that the footprints in the cave, a "short line of right feet only," were not convincing, and the "nest" of ferns had never been slept in.

"There was no other sign of occupation in the cave, except a few empty soda cans and snack food wrappers," he wrote in e-mailed comments to The Moscow Times on Tuesday.

Even yetis need the occasional Coke—that's according to our own cryptozoological expert, Ars science editor Jay Timmer, who may have been wise-cracking—but we'll concede the point. Perhaps there was no yeti fur in the cave. It hardly matters, though, because the last month has been a banner month for mythical creatures. Surely one of them has been located? I mean, the official news agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) wouldn't issue press releases about finding a unicorn lair unless the belligerent authoritarian regime had actually found a unicorn lair. Some things are just too serious to joke about.

Into the unicorn's lair

"Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668)," begins the November 29 announcement. "The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words 'Unicorn Lair' stands in front of the lair."

I mean, this is written on a rock. You just don't go to that kind of trouble unless 1) you are setting the rock up next to an actual unicorn lair or 2) you're trying to make some historical point that will let you poke neighboring South Korea in the eye. Let's keep reading. Here's Jo Hui Sung, director of the History Institute:

The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom.

Welp.

The Atlantic notes that Korean unicorns aren't quite horses with a single horn, but they still remain firmly mythical. Sad, I say. Timmer wasn't nearly as broken up about it. "I'm just disappointed there won't be a 'Kim Jong Il looking at unicorns' photo," he said after I interrupted his reading of some scientific journal.

But Timmer has the skeptic's temperament, whereas I'm a "I want to believe" sort of person. Fortunately, this week brought serious, scientific proof of another mythical creature, the sasquatch, who I thought had come out of hiding for Harry and the Hendersons but apparently doesn't command broad national respect. That should change now that a US scientist has sequenced some bigfoot DNA.

Sasquatch, a true Native American

Harry, the gentle giant

Amblin Entertainment

Down in Nacogdoches, Texas, Dr. Melba Ketchum claims to have spent the last five years sequencing the DNA of bigfoot. While sasquatch sightings most often turn out to be nothing more exciting than drunk guys wearing Ghillie suits, true believers know that the real thing is still out there, curiously resistant to non-blurry photography.

"Researchers' extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species," said this week's press release, which sounded quite science-y. "The male progenitor that contributed the unknown sequence to this hybrid is unique as its DNA is more distantly removed from humans than other recently discovered hominins like the Denisovan individual," said Ketchum, which sounds likely enough to me.

Timmer, when I interrupted him on a conference call with his freelancers, snapped, "It was actually a regular foot, but this is Texas, so they exaggerated it." I walked away wounded, because this is quite a serious issue. As the press release goes on to explain, not only is Bigfoot real, but the US government needs to "immediately recognize the Sasquatch as an indigenous people." Ketchum herself adds that "Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a 'license' to hunt, trap, or kill them."

Sure! I mean, this has all been peer-reviewed. And published. Well, I thought it had until I badgered Timmer about it some more and he pointed me to the lines "currently under peer-review" and "full details of the study will be presented in the near future when the study manuscript publishes."

At this point it’s probably important to note that the study has not yet been peer reviewed and Ketchum has thus far refused to release her data, explain her methodology or say where she got the “Sasquatch DNA samples” in the first place. Also, according to Houston Chronicle science writer Eric Borger, Ketchum has credibility issues of her own: her company, DNA Diagnostics, has received more than two dozen customer complaints and gets an F from the Better Business Bureau. Oh, and those mysterious third-species males who were supposedly picking up human women on some kind of proto-Craigslist? According to a blogger and Bigfoot enthusiast named Robert Lindsay, earlier drafts of Ketchum’s study claimed they were angels.

Luckily—have I stressed just how many mythical creatures have been in the news this month?—I am still not out of options to rekindle my sense of wonder. The chupacabra will sustain me.

Guard your goats

Early this month, a hunter in Missouri shot what he thought was a coyote. But the "coyote" was 81 pounds, a full seven pounds more than the national record, and it has been taken to a regional conservation office for tests. That is, essentially, the entire news story. Naturally, it led one outlet to go with the headline "Chupacabra? Missouri hunter bags mystery coyote-type animal."

The chupacabra, the mythical goat-blood-sucking creature rumored to haunt the American southwest and northern Mexico, lives! (Or rather, lived. This one is definitely dead.)

I pondered looking into the story further, but we all know how that turned out the last three times. Instead, I've decided just to enjoy this crazy, wonderful, mysterious world we inhabit, one not filled with yeti, unicorns, or sasquatch—but one quite possibly filled with chupacabra.

I explained all this to Timmer, who just uncapped a bottle of single-malt scotch as he nodded along with a polite smile. He then started to drink, deeply.

Update: This article, now with more ghost vampires

A few hours after this article was posted, The Associated Press published news that a local council governing the western Serbian town of Zarozje has been warning its residents to keep garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms. The AP story, "Vampire on the loose in Serbia????" [additional question marks added by the editor to express excitement and/or shouting], says that while the local council's advisory is probably a ploy to increase tourist traffic in the remote area, at least three of the people the AP reporter talked to were actually keeping garlic in their pockets and believed in the possibility of the return of Sava Savanovic, Serbia's first vampire.

Savanovic, "reputedly drank the blood of those who came to the small shack in the dense oak tree forest to mill their grain on the clear mountain Rogatica river," the AP reported, but "the wooden mill collapsed a few months ago - allegedly angering the vampire, who is now looking for a new place to hang his cape."

"Some locals claim they can hear steps cracking dry forest leaves and strange sounds coming from the rocky mountain peaks where the vampire was purportedly killed with a sharp stake that pierced his heart - but managed to survive in spirit as a butterfly," said the AP. (Nobody ever suspects the butterfly).

Science editor Jay Timmer was unavailable on Saturday morning to put this weekend editor's fears to rest, possibly due to the bottle of single-malt scotch deputy editor Nate Anderson drove him to drink yesterday afternoon. Until Timmer can find some science to disprove the return of the Serbian ghost vampire/butterfly, this editor recommends that readers eat garlic-rich foods in addition to watching out for that chupacabra.

I'm sure Ketchum is all for Bigfoot rights... until it comes time to challenge another Bigfoot trainer to a duel. Then they must engage in epic combat until one of them collapses from exhaustion, while the winner gets to return to its impossibly small enclosure to never see the light of day again until the next fight.

In a more serious note, it is kind of concerning that "scientists" keep putting out "studies" like these. It doesn't do anything to help public trust in science as a whole -- something the US needs to improve greatly.

Somewhat ironically it has been noted here in the local press and now in the original link on North Korea's archaeologist findings that the asian notion of unicorns is entirely different from the western world. (Which should come as no surprise.) The mythical beast in question is the Qilin:

"There are many different ways Qilin have been described. Some think of them as a rare form of unicorn; others have described it as a creature that has the head of a dragon and a body of tiger with scales. Others see it as a creature with a single horn on its forehead, a multicolored back, the hooves of a horse, the body of a deer, and with the tail of an ox." [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin ]

The simplest bet is that the archaeologists have found a Qilin statue at the site of the Yongmuong temple. And then the western media has thrown in their own myth of wholesale North Korean incompetence.

I'm sure archaeologists at large aren't much happy with the results.

EDIT: And I now note the article is informed with the difference to unicorns. The analogy of promoting this would be that archaeologists have found a Greek temple with a centaur in (centaurs usually being sons of Cronos), and claim that archaeologists entertain the notion centaurs exist.

Between this and the 666 RFID chip story, methinks this is a slow news cycle for the poor folks at Ars. If you can't find news, go make it!

At least some of the Ars fluff is entertaining.

I think you've got the value judgment exactly backwards. Good journalism puts things in context, and while there's little science in these two "science" articles (obviously!), the cultural context is what makes it worthwhile.

These two stories were some of my favorite Ars coverage in a long time. Investigation and analysis is better than just regurgitating press releases. I hate to see this disparaged as "slow news day."

If it's possible to cross the DNA of a horse and a narwhal to make a unicorn factual, and it happens at some point in the future ... does that make the future science fiction until it actually happens? Does that mean the truth is only that which we have experience or knowledge exists? Does that excuse rejecting someone's belief in them, worthy of ridicule from a scientifically uneducated position?

If it's possible to cross the DNA of a horse and a narwhal to make a unicorn factual, and it happens at some point in the future ... does that make the future science fiction until it actually happens? Does that mean the truth is only that which we have experience or knowledge exists? Does that excuse rejecting someone's belief in them, worthy of ridicule from a scientifically uneducated position?

If a medieval French peasant had said during their lifetime that "gasoline-powered horseless carriages don't exist," they would not have been wrong. If one of their contemporaries had tried to argue that they did exist, that would have been wrong.

In a more serious note, it is kind of concerning that "scientists" keep putting out "studies" like these. It doesn't do anything to help public trust in science as a whole -- something the US needs to improve greatly.

Anyone can call him- or herself a scientist, but that doesn't make it so. Unless we come up with a licensing system for scientists, and a trademark on the term Scientist, it's pretty hard to see how bogus scientists can be controlled, modulo someone defrauding someone else for enough money to make it worthwhile to go to court about it, or a public shaming.

One of the hardest things for me to communicate to my decidedly non-scientific parents when they ask me about various miracle nostrums they see on TV, in newspapers, etc, is how to decide whose claims to trust. Given the amount of scientific fraud committed each year by seemingly legitimate members of the scientific community (often covered in Ars), it's hard for ANYONE who's not an expert in the field to determine whom to trust.

I think the status will remain quo on this concern.

As for the idea of licensing scientists, someone shoot me before I say something else insanely stupid!

Anyone can call him- or herself a scientist, but that doesn't make it so. Unless we come up with a licensing system for scientists, and a trademark on the term Scientist, it's pretty hard to see how bogus scientists can be controlled, modulo someone defrauding someone else for enough money to make it worthwhile to go to court about it, or a public shaming.

Funny article, but how many mythical creatures are just animals with "defects"?

Your "birth defects" theory is powerless to explain the mysterious Esquilax! Yes, that fabled beast with the impossible anatomy. For you see, the Esquilax is a horse with the head of a rabbit and the body of a rabbit!

Anyone can call him- or herself a scientist, but that doesn't make it so. Unless we come up with a licensing system for scientists, and a trademark on the term Scientist, it's pretty hard to see how bogus scientists can be controlled, modulo someone defrauding someone else for enough money to make it worthwhile to go to court about it, or a public shaming.

In a more serious note, it is kind of concerning that "scientists" keep putting out "studies" like these. It doesn't do anything to help public trust in science as a whole -- something the US needs to improve greatly.

[dons tinfoil hat]Perhaps the Discovery Institute is placing ringers in the scientific community to help discredit science as a whole.[/conspiracy]

Very interesting article Nate. It's not the first chubacabra killed. We also had a series of sightings here locally here in Ohio a year or so ago but I can't find any links to it on our local paper's website.

Keep up the good work. Keep us informed of the holes in the veil of secrecy of the League of Mythical Creatures.

If it's possible to cross the DNA of a horse and a narwhal to make a unicorn factual, and it happens at some point in the future ... does that make the future science fiction until it actually happens? Does that mean the truth is only that which we have experience or knowledge exists? Does that excuse rejecting someone's belief in them, worthy of ridicule from a scientifically uneducated position?

A horse and a rhinoceros would be a more obvious combination to put a single horn on a horse. The narwhal's "horn" is a tusk.

Or just breed rhinos for smaller size, thinner bodies, more hair, a smaller nose horn and a long forehead horn. If we can do what we've done with dogs, I think a practical rhino would be an intersting project.

Funny article, but how many mythical creatures are just animals with "defects"?

Your "birth defects" theory is powerless to explain the mysterious Esquilax! Yes, that fabled beast with the impossible anatomy. For you see, the Esquilax is a horse with the head of a rabbit and the body of a rabbit!

Damn if I wasn't thinking along the exact same line! /Esquilax high five!

You forgot the most important detail of this story: what single-malt Scotch does Timmer drink?

Seconded.

We know what their desks look like. We know a lot of their spouses and SOs. But their preferred scotch? This is a mystery!

Regarding the article, why do people insist on creating and believing in mythical creatures, especially the bad ones? We _have_ terrifying creatures in the world like those blobby deep-sea fish, cockroaches, and IRS agents.